Comment navigation

Well I really dont think that you are deprieved of listening to the artists featuring in the festival. Don’t you think it happens in most of the big festivals. Be it fort high school,sheshadripura rama mandiram. its just arnd 10% of local artists. I am not a fanatic and i too believe that music is beyond all the other issues. But it is the duty of any organisation not to discriminate and sideline Artists of such repute. Its nothing but demenaing the giants in the respective field. I am not sure if you have heard to the Ganakalabhushana. R.K.Padmanabha. There are very few artists who can produce the kind of ragabhava. When we have such artists, it is not right to demean them

I have heard Sri R.K. Padmanabha sing. In fact I was residing in Bangalore last year and had the opportunity to hear most of the local artists there. Sri R.K. Srikantan is one of my personal favorites and he does perform in Chennai too. In fact he is performing in Chennai today also.

I had no qualms about these 2-3 series in Bangalore not featuring much of the local artists because there were so many other fests and individual concerts where they are amply featured. In fact there were not many opportunities to hear artists from Chennai and I was very happy that these 2-3 series did feature the cream from Chennai.

Having said that, I must say that I have no idea whether any discrimination of the kind you are talking about is happening. If it is, then it is really sad. One must always be open to hear/feature good music irrespective of which nation/state/caste/gender the artists belong to.

Mr. Ram i am not sure if you know the kind of services that is rendered by Sri.R.K.Padmanabha. If someone in madras would have done the same thing i am sure he would have been awarded sangeetha kalanidhi or a Padma award by now. Its not true that people from chennai don’t perform here that regularly.You find one or the other artist performing literally every day.Just because he is from karnataka he is been sidelined.Show me one artist who has contributed to the musical fraternity to the Extent of Ganakalbhushana R.k.Padmanabha. Don’t you think this is discrimination??Well i agree that one must always be open to good music irrespective of state/caste/gender etcetc….That is what i am trying to say, If someone has merrit he has to be given credit. Probably you aren’t aware of how highly he is regarded by his fellow artists like Mysore Nagraj,Mysore manjunath, Srimushnam raja rao,Tiruvarur bhaktavatsalam,Umayalapuram sivaraman. Being his fan, i feel really bad when i see people not giving him his share of credit. There is no other reason i can think of other than him being from Karnataka.

I have read and heard Sri R.K. Padmanabha talk many times about the service he is trying to render to Carnatic Music and so am aware of some, if not all, of whatever he is doing. I can understand your feelings and would refrain myself from posting about how there are other artists too who do a lot of service to music in Chennai and in other parts of the country but whose names aren’t heard much outside. I do hope such people like Sri R.K. Padmanabha continue to do their service.

This is probably my last comment on this topic since I do not know why he is not being featured in the festival and since I myself cannot do anything about it.